Producer Seeing Black After Cattle Rally

Since the official start of summer arrived with Memorial Day, grilling season and fresh fundamentals are helping ignite a new rally in cattle markets.

Both live and feeder cattle futures traded limit up during Wednesday’s session, and August live cattle came in at $124/cwt while feeders passed $157/cwt.

Reports of cash cattle trading up to $137/cwt, funds pushing long positions from June to August, news India is pulling back on exports from the world’s largest cattle herd, and decent summer demand is starting to stack up.

Producers say they’re now starting to reap the benefits of this recent run up in prices.

“We shipped the first portion of our calf crop from 2016 last week, and it was the first time in a long time that the bottom number was black instead of red,” said Derek Sawyer, a cattle producer from McPherson, Kan.

Sawyer says he hasn’t seen the same price reaction in the heifer market.